Many classic English foods, stereotypically, leave much to be desired. Mushy peas? I ate earlier, no thank you. Black pudding? It lacks the forceful spicing of Mexican or Korean blood sausages. Jellied eels? I’m leaving.
Yet Dingles Public House, the new English restaurant inside the Inn at the Opera in Hayes Valley, makes classic British food worth craving. Opened in November, Dingles is the first restaurant by couple Anissa and George Dingles, who met while working at Corey Lee’s now-shuttered Monsieur Benjamin in the city.
San Francisco has the Pig and Whistle pub and more upscale Cavalier, but English establishments remain a relative novelty. At Dingles, tables are fully booked nightly, while wait times for a bar walk-in can climb up to an hour. Part of a wider gastronomic British invasion, its immediate popularity suggests that right now diners desire comforting simplicity on the plate and warm diligence in hospitality.
But they also love a theme, and Dingles delivers: Dark green walls, vintage floral wallpaper that evokes nan’s living room, the added patina of tables apparently salvaged from Monsieur Benjamin, and ceramic chickens and metal duck busts peppered throughout the room makes the dimly lit public house feel like a TV set. If that weren’t enough, there’s art of animals in Victorian dress – a raccoon in top hat and a tuxedoed lobster – while patrons lounging on the burnished wood bar, the best seat in the house, can sip Vespers dubbed the “007.”
The sticky toffee pudding at Dingles is relatively straightforward, as are most of the pleasures at the heavily themed British pub. (Cesar Hernandez/S.F. Chronicle)
Side-stepping the temptation to “elevate” things, Dingles deals in unabashedly rib-sticking and exceedingly English cooking, with a menu of the greatest hits: Scotch eggs, sausage rolls in puff pastry, meat pies, fish and chips, served with the requisite mushy peas. The most satisfying of these classics is the Welsh rarebit – just about the greatest cheese toast in the city. Gooey, slightly pungent and inundated with salty-sweet umami, it consists of sourdough toast that’s coated in mustard, showered in Worcestershire sauce, layered with thick globs of nutty cheddar, then broiled until molten and caramelized. Its depth of flavor is immense but the sharpness of the mustard brings it all into balance.
Skip the overpriced fish and chips – the exterior of the spuds was too hard, the mushy peas too bland, and the fish, while expertly fried with a golden outer shell and ideally moist interior, cannot quite justify the $36 price tag alone. Instead, opt for the stellar Guinness pie, a supremely flaky pastry packed with beef soaked in a beer-enriched sauce, which is accompanied by bone marrow on the side, as if it weren’t rich enough. Break the crust to unleash a steam of gravy that’s as thick and meaty as bolognese.
The heavier foods (e.g. most of the menu) all but require the radicchio and gem salad, which is not shy in its use of sherry vinegar. Another palate-reviving highlight is the roasted cabbage, brightened by miso vinaigrette.
The essence of Dingles is most succinctly encapsulated by its sticky toffee pudding, a warm, ultra soft, spiced sponge cake drowned in a glossy toffee sauce, served with a contrasting scoop of ice cream. It’s decadently sweet and rich and uncomplicated – straightforward, honest comfort.
Dingles Public House. 333 Fulton St., San Francisco. dinglespublichouse.com
This article originally published at The British pub that San Francisco didn’t know it craved.